Foreign officials push for plane crash bodies to be released

Thai authorities today said they are being pressured by some foreign officials to release the remaining bodies of victims from a plane crash on the resort island of Phuket.

Lt Gen Ampron Charuchinda, police commissioner of forensics, cited Israel as being among the most frustrated.

The Israeli ambassador in Thailand complained to the Thai Foreign Ministry about the slow pace bodies were being released, Ampron said.

Six Israelis were among the 89 killed when the One-Two-Go airline flight skidded off a runway Sunday while landing in driving wind and rain and catching fire.

It was unclear how many Israeli bodies have been released.

Ampron said he “sympathised” with frustrated relatives but said he had to ensure that he released the bodies to the right families – noting that Thai officials came under fire after the 2004 tsunami for wrongly identifying bodies.

“It is my responsibility. If the identification is not clear, I cannot release the body,” he said.

“I am following international standards of the DVI (Disaster Victims Identification).”

The Israeli embassy did not immediately return calls for comment.

The dead came from at least 10 countries, including the United States, Australia, Britain, France, Germany, Iran, Ireland, Israel, Sweden and Thailand.

Official tallies confirm that Thailand had the most victims – 36 – followed by Iran with 18.

Nine French, eight British, six Israelis, five Americans and four Irish nationals were also among the dead, according to embassy reports and documents obtained by The Associated Press from Thai immigration police.

At least 30 bodies which have not been identified yet because they are so badly burned will require officials to try to verify their identifies with dental records, finger prints or DNA samples.

All the Thai bodies and that of the Indonesian pilot have been retrieved by relatives, according to Maj Gen Santhan Chayanon, deputy police commander of the region that includes Phuket.

Survivors have described how the aircraft lurched up, then down, hitting the tarmac hard. The plane skidded off the runway, breaking up and catching fire as it ploughed through a short retaining wall.

Investigators have said wind shear – a sudden change in either wind speed or direction in an aircraft’s flight path that can destabilise a plane – was among the possible causes of the crash.

Transport Ministry officials said the pilot, Arief Mulyadi, was aware of conditions but chose to land anyway.